Every Senator steps forward on his first day in office, puts his hand on the Bible and then utters these words…..

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
…

The Fourth Amendment, considered by most to be part of the Constitution states the following……

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

These are those following who allowed unwarranted wire tapping by the government to continue….. five more years. It was voted in 2008 to expire on Monday.

The world didn’t end after 2008… It may not end now in 2012.. but estimates are currently that over 10,000 Americans have been picked up and held like Joe Padilla somewhere without access to an attorney, without access to communication, without access to due process, because of the Patriot Act.

One day we will ask how this could happen. Who was too blame? Who could have stepped up and stopped it, but instead, chose to turn away?

This is going to my hard core Republican friends. Why are you still supporting Romney?

1) You know he is not going to win.
2) You know as the election heats up, his Bain Capital experience will make Republicans untouchable for decades.
3) You can’t pin down where Romney stands on anything.
4) He tied his dog to a car.
5) He stands with black people and says “Who let the dogs out, woof, woof.”

Most of you are telling me, “I certainly can’t vote for Obama. I guess I’m not voting for President this time.”

Let’s say, just for argument sakes there was a presidential candidate out there who says to have good government you need: …………………

1. Become reality driven. Don’t kid yourself or others.
Find out what’s what and base your decisions and actions
on that.

2. Always be honest and tell the truth. It’s extremely
difficult to do any damage to anybody when you are
willing to tell the truth–regardless of the
consequences.

3. Always do what’s right and fair. Remember, the more
you actually accomplish, the louder your critics become.
You’ve got to learn to ignore your critics. You’ve got to
continue to do what you think is right. You’ve got to
maintain your integrity.

4. Determine your goal, develop a plan to reach that
goal, and then act. Don’t procrastinate.

5. Make sure everybody who ought to know what you’re
doing knows what you’re doing. Communicate.

6. Don’t hesitate to deliver bad news. There is always
time to salvage things. There is always time to fix
things. Henry Kissinger said that anything that can be
revealed eventually should be revealed immediately.

7. Last, be willing to do whatever it takes to get your
job done. If you’ve got a job that you don’t love enough
to do what it takes to get your job done, then quit and
get one that you do love, and then make a difference.

Honesty. Integrity. Principal.

Sounds good so far. Let us say just for argument, he had chief executive experience. Let us say just or argument that he once ran a state, one of the fifty in this union. Let us say while governor, this is what he did…..

During his tenure, New Mexico experienced the longest period without a tax-increase in the state’s entire history.

1) He cut the rate of government growth in half,

2) Left the New Mexico state government with a budget surplus and 1000 fewer employees (without firing anyone),

3) Privatized half of the prisons in the state,

4) Brought a state-wide school voucher system to New Mexico.

5) Vetoed 750 bills (more than all the vetoes of the other 49 Governors in the country at that time, combined) with only 2 overrides, earning him the nickname Gary “Veto” Johnson.

6) In 1999, Johnson became the highest-ranking elected official in the United States to advocate the legalization of drugs.

7) Shifted Medicaid to managed care.

ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU WANT? ISN’T THAT WHAT WE NEED?

Can you not think of a better way to show your lack of enthusiasm over a wealthy capitalist buying his way to the top of your ticket, by voting for someone who has character, who does what you’ve always wanted, a doer, not a talker?

Remember Republicans. It is your values that are important. If your party has given up and moved on from your values, don’t think you have to be loyal to the word…. “Republican”… What you have to be loyal too, is yourself. Always. Never lie to yourself.

You don’t need to waste your vote on Romney. You probably need to find more about this guy, Gary Johnson, and then throw your support behind him.

Don’t worry it is not one of the two parties on whose ticket he is running. Remember, at one point in time, the Republican Party was a once a third party too. One that went mainstream because of its core values, its principles resonated with everyday American People.

Only Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel who see America first, party second, can be trusted.

Meanwhile McCain and his supporters think America is going to allow liars to run us for four more years?
Poor Mike Castle, it doesn’t look like he’ll tie Carper’s record after all………..

Voting for ANY republican that still believes this war is justified, is throwing one’s vote away.

The real question this summer is not “will they win?” but is instead… “how deep can they be buried?” For America must never again allow republican policies to haunt our Federal government….
For if you find you were lied to, yet you still do not discredit the one who twisted your arms with falsehoods, you are implicitly guilty of his same crime…

“We all relied on flawed intelligence, but there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully supported by intelligence,” Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.

In return, the knee-jerk republican response of someone caught with their hand in the cookie jar was this: “The report released today by the majority is an attempt by my friends on the other side of the aisle to score election year points,” Christopher Bond said.

Ha. Don’t expect anyone to believe it….Facts speak for themselves. As Merit Bound Alley is fond of stating.
The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is. -Winston Churchill

China has a shrimp problem. Too many people; too few shrimp. With over a billion people to feed daily, shrimp is the only protein source they consider dependable. Their coastline lacks adequate length to feed their population. Since they cannot support themselves, they must rely on foreign food, to sustain themselves.

This puts them at risk. Obviously should food become unavailable to them because of diplomacy, they will need the military means to back up their demands.

This has begun already. China has declared all shrimp areas to fall within its national interest. That includes the Gulf of Mexico right here at home. They also include Ecuador, Mexico, Indonesia, and other high concentrations of shrimp production. Some of this has been recently aggravated by Chinese mismanagement of their own fish farms. Various viral infections, and the excessive use of antibiotics, have contaminated Chinese food supplies. Therefore only other outside fisheries can now support its growing population.

Chinese officials have warned the US that it will take whatever steps are needed to maintain control of its future food supply. At one point the US and China may do battle over shrimp; whenever it becomes scarce. One may think of China of old and dismiss their military threats.

Dismissing China is not a wise thing to do…….

China has exploded in its amount of submarines. In two more years they are estimated that they will have around 85 submarines capable of active patrols. In contrast, Russia, which once had 90 submarines in the Pacific, has mothballed all but 20. Japan has 16 submarines and no plans to buy more. The U.S. Pacific Fleet has 35 submarines, with many considered to be the most modern in the world.

In response, the U.S. Navy is reversing an old Soviet-era formula, where the United States had 60 percent of its submarines in the Atlantic and 40 percent in the Pacific. In addition to shifting toward keeping 60 percent in the Pacific, the United States recently set up an antisubmarine warfare center in San Diego.

Reports of a recent build up of Chinese missiles has many analysts worried. China has bought or borrowed technology creating both short and long term missiles. As China woos many Central and South American countries, many of them hostile to the United States, some if not many of these missiles could already be in place.

China’s biggest weapon is the 1.2 Trillion investment it has in the economy of the United States. Should China create a financial crises, the fact they owe 3 years of this nations budget, would wreak havoc with international markets. With the future US in economic shambles, they could force us to choose between accepting their trade agreements on shrimp, or risk all out war.

We are their match today. But as they are booming; we are shrinking. Eventually, as all the nations we consider as allies start kow-towing to China, we will find ourselves becoming isolated internationally, and surrounded by Chinese bases.

This will not be a dumb enemy, we will fight. We are told that they hacked into Secretary Gates computer as recently as last June. Already we fear that they can disrupt our defenses with cyber-technology whenever they want.

Estimates show that China can field an active army of 2.2 million. We are having trouble keeping a level of 160,000 in Iraq. Should they decide to attack the US, there is little we can do.

Imagine a standing army of 2.2 million staged in bases located in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada? Imagine if they demanded total control over our shrimp processes. Imagine if they politely allowed us thirty percent after they had paid for all their expenses……

Imagine if we refused and they invaded. I am sure we would welcome them at first, having rid us of Bush and Cheney, but soon we would come to realize that they were not here to help us economically. They came to steal our shrimp!

It wouldn’t take long for groups of Red Dawn vigilantes to start guerrilla tactics designed to wear down the enemy and induce them to leave……our Katrina survivors would scuttle their boats, rather than let the Chinese take them. The only way for China to harvest their shrimp would be to bring over shrimp boats themselves……Our militias would make sure that they only way they could gather shrimp, was to be well protected.

The Chinese would install Americans sympathetic to them in positions of power. The People’s Parliament they would call it. However these true Americans, drafted and installed by the Chinese, would realize that cooperating with the invaders would yield to the capitulation of everything America had stood for. Instead of cooperating, they would stall, argue, complain, drag their feet, and do nothing about passing the legislation desperately wanted by China, giving the Chinese no incentive to stay……..

Ultimately the logistics and cost of controlling the US, as in Red Dawn, would eventually cause the Chinese to pack up and go home. It would be a function of the strength of the Chinese will over time, to determine how long their stay would continue.

We would, no doubt, as we gained strength militarily, have to put up with surges in the number of Chinese nationals brought in to pacify our feisty country……..but in the end, Chinese public pressure pushing back against China’s government, would eventually cause the communist government’s collapse and the future withdrawal of all Chinese troops from American soil………

Hyperbole has its uses. Often points are scored in courtrooms, on televisions, and national debate through the use of hyperbole.

Only by writing, have I fully come to appreciate its usefulness. The effect of such comes not from what is said, but from the thought process that goes through each listeners head as they try to decipher the irrationality of what they have just heard………..Often through that analysis, they make some neural connections that are often quoted as “thinking outside the box…..”

It is unfortunate that in this case, my title is not hyperbole. It is my response to this, which I picked up from a link on Delaware Liberal…..

I have to admit, even though I try to use clean language when I write, when I read this my bowels rolled over and I even said “Oh shit. Here it is.” For amongst ourselves we have been talking about the repeated tendency of our president to laughingly consider himself as a king. And as we did, all of us knew in the back of our minds that the only real rational for such unconstitutional actions was for them to actually think………. that they would someday become one…………

Many of our generation were never schooled in the classics. As one who sprinted through two years of Latin, I would highly recommend that the reading in Julius Caesars’ own words, his argument for the replacement of the Roman democracy with the instillation of himself as its dictator, be required reading for all members of all democracies.

Fortunately today we do not all need to know Latin,…… for the same argument is dramatically portrayed in the last three episodes of the Star Wars Trilogy. The Dark Side is among us……………………………

But this recent executive order scares me…….. for next comes the assassination of our Jedi knights and the heartless slaughter of their future generation……………………….

I am no Jedi knight, but I may have to become one after this..

From the executive order signed days ago……….

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,..I hereby order: all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:(for) any person..undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.

If one assumes the language is English and that the words therein have the meanings associated with those defined by dictionaries of the English language, then as someone who is adamantly against the Bush Iraqi Oil Grab, I am one of these, I am included. So are most of you…….

So is Dennis Kucinich, Olympia Snow, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi…….all of us who protest not the war, but it’s failed policy, are in the same boat, for according to Republican Sen. Bunning of Kentucky, anyone who opposes the war, is in effect giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Despite the reality that the opposite is true, as Dana was quick to point out here, that it is really the policy of George W Bush that has banded and bonded disparate groups (united by their hatred of both al Qaeda and the US) to “GET US OUT OF IRAQ“, ………. under the language of this order, even poor June and Rebecca Young, who have eloquently spoken against the war, are now like Will Smith and Gene Hackman,……………. enemies of the state.

And should we, as patriots, decide to help our friends and neighbors after their bank accounts have been frozen and assets devoured, we too stand on the wrong side of this capricious Ministry of Magic.

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

To our representative E-ZPass Mike Castle, Republican of Delaware: Our sincere thanks for your silence in support of the dissolution of what was once considered the greatest nation to have ever existed on this planet……….May future generations show you mercy and spare you the infamy that has hitherto, been previously reserved for Benedict Arnold, Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate……….